Enseignement Universel.

Anna Dot

Professor Joseph Jacotot (France 1770-1840), who didn’t know Dutch, developed a very particular method with his students, so that they could understand French: it was about reading a bilingual edition (French and Dutch) of “Les Aventures Télémaque” (François Fénelon, 1699) and then write a text about what they read, in French.

‘Enseignment Universel” is a collection of new texts constructed by reorganizing , with different criteria considered usual in the processes of learning and comprehension of a language (such as the alphabetical order, grammatical categories, syntagm, synonyms, antonyms, among others) the words of three original texts that are involved in the story of Professor Jacotot. “Enseignment Universel. Langue étrangère”m by Joseph Jacotot, “Le Maitre ignorant. Cinq leçons sur l’émancipation intelectuelle”, by Jacques Rancière, and “De Gevallen van Telemachus”, by Fénelon.